Achieving Transparency
by Arwen Jade Kenobi
Summary: It takes Irene Adler for Sherlock to understand exactly who and what John Watson is to him.  SPOILERS FOR A SCANDAL IN BELGRAVIA.  Sherlock/Irene  of a sort , pre Sherlock/John.


It is not the first time that he's been called a virgin with that tone of distaste mixed with mockery. He imagines it will not be the last time he hears it either but hearing it from Irene Adler (or Jim Moriarty if he chooses to believe her) stings like a whip. He flinches and he hates himself for it and he makes her pay for that with every stab of his thumb on her phone.

He is furious. He is not even going to try to lie to himself about that. He is furious and at that moment he is more than okay with Irene meeting her death in a few months time. He certainly has a heart and there is a price you pay when you break it.

Or rather burn it, he thinks as the days go on. It's a burn but not a break, a scald from a hot kettle as opposed to the stripping and burning of flesh. His heart is usable and not shattered. He may have never been in love before but he doesn't think that what he felt and feels for Irene is quite it.

Never mind. It is love – ish. It is something very very close to love but not quite there. They are compelled by each other, in lust with the idea that there is someone like them out there more than any sort of desire to get into anything more serious than perhaps a kiss or dinner. Shagging or anything more serious was out of the question. Irene prefers the company of women much more than men and Sherlock is fairly certain that he doesn't prefer anybody quite that way.

Fairly would be the word here, for as much as this whole episode with Irene has been a series of firsts for him that heart, that pesky thing, staples a memo to his head that these feelings are not quite as new as he seems to think.

* * *

><p>One week after "A Scandal in Belgravia" is on the blog (heavily edited naturally) John arrives home and declares to Sherlock that he is off women. Sherlock puts down the blow torch, which is saying something since him and the blow torch have been inseparable for the past few hours. "Bollocks," is his judgement on that. Has been the past few times John has said this.<p>

"No. Really." John says, adamant. "I am not doing this anymore. I can't."

"Helen not to your liking?"

"Kelly, Sherlock, believe it or not."

Sherlock's eyes widen and he is utterly silent for a moment before he bursts out laughing. John joins in, helplessly, and collapses onto to the couch. Sherlock follows him out and flops down beside him, grabbing a bag of biscuits on the way. "She never corrected either of us. She just let you call her Helen for-"

"Three weeks, I know! God, it's ridiculous! I figured out her name was Kelly when I passed Helen on the street on the way to the cafe and she glared at me so hard I should have had a heart attack right on the spot."

"Then you broke up with Kelly right then and there, who was relieved since she had received some rather alarming house guests and has been thoroughly disillusioned with dating an internet sensation."

John waves his hand in a "and there you have it" gesture and helps himself to the biscuits. "I can't keep track of my own girlfriends. If that isn't a sign that I need to end it now I don't know what is."

Sherlock has heard John state that he is never dating again before but this one has none of the usual hallmarks that it will be more of a break than a full stop. "You're serious this time, aren't you?" He does not know why he needs to ask when he knows full well but he supposes it doesn't matter.

Actually it does. He wants John to say it himself but Sherlock can't fathom why.

"Very." John tells him. He gets up to make some tea. Sherlock follows him as he expertly locates usable mugs and tea out of the mess in the kitchen and stands next to him as he keeps watch over the kettle. "I have no business having a girlfriend when I am much more interested in solving crimes, getting shot at, and running after you than I am in a naked woman."

Irene Adler flashed unbidden across his mind's eye. Their first meeting, her blown pupils and elevated pulse, and the kiss that would happen at the end of the world...

He shoves it down and back and brings back the utter shock he feels at that statement. He'd been joking when he'd made that comment about John's laptop containing naked women but he knows that John enjoys dating and enjoys women. Of course Sherlock has known from day one that the game and the danger mean more to him than any girlfriend could. If he really wanted a girlfriend and a normal life he would have left long ago. Or rather would have never moved in.

"Does this increase the likelihood that when I'm talking to you you're actually here?"

John chuckles as the kettle boils and tells him that the chances of him being in the flat are indeed much higher. "You can always text me if you're not sure, you know," he tells him as he pours them their tea. He points Sherlock toward the sugar and takes his black. "I don't have an excuse to not answer you anymore. Unless I'm dead, or kidnapped, or at work or something."

"You always text me back when you're at work."

"Okay or if my hands are full. You get the point."

They head back to the living room and sip their tea in comfortable silence. Sherlock has never given one moment of thought to John and his women, at least not really, but he is very very glad to know that he is not going to be seeing one anytime soon.

* * *

><p>When John had been dating it had never seemed like he had been. He still came whenever Sherlock asked for him and still stayed whenever he needed him to. And that's including whether he'd asked him to or not. It had never required much convincing to get him to dump any Sarahs, Jeanettes, Helens, or Kellys for a case or otherwise but, despite all that, all this potential free John time is like Christmas. Anything that Sherlock has on the go that he even thinks might require John's presence is assured to have him. Sherlock even starts inviting him along to cases that really don't need him just because he can and because John will say yes. It's suspicious at first but Sherlock knows that John loves it as much as he does so he doesn't think much more on it.<p>

Then someone points a gun at John again. It hasn't happened since the Woman, since the CIA agent demanding that he give him something that he doesn't have or else John's brain matter and skull would be everywhere. It sends him right back to Moriarty and the pool as well and he full out loses it. He lunges at the gunman, which the gunman had not anticipated, and ends up throwing them off the pier and into the freezing cold water below. They grapple with each other and Sherlock is a hair's breath away from his last – he's submerged underwater and can't get out of this headlock – when he hears a splash and then he's released. He kicks to the surface and gasps for air.

Then he realises that John is not here. Nor is the other man. He calls for John. No answer. He yells again. No answer. He dives underwater and looks but it's too dark for him to see and he feels nothing when he stretches out his hands blindly in front of him as he swims around in the deep. His hand eventually smacks into John's face but it is John who grabs Sherlock by the wrist and hauls them back up to the surface.

Soon enough they're in the back of an ambulance wrapped in shock blankets and sipping tea, huddling into each other for extra warmth, and telling each other off for being idiotic. Neither of them really means it but it's just a ritual they go through.

For the first time Sherlock wonders why they bother with this. It's not like either of them would have acted any differently if they had to do it again. Or if positions had been reversed.

It's just how they operate.

* * *

><p>Sherlock has not and will never delete the Woman. He keeps tabs on his international papers more than he ever did and every so often catches wind of something. It's subtle, subtle enough that perhaps she remains ahead of the game. Why does he bother? He doesn't really have a proper answer for that. By rights he shouldn't care but he does. He does so much and perhaps it is that fact that makes him keep keeping tabs if not actually searching.<p>

When he gets a hint, really more of an idea, that she is in trouble he's off like a shot to the Middle East to help. He knows she appreciates the rescue as much as she resents it because it is something that he has felt himself: John has saved him twice this week from almost precisely the same trick from the same pair of criminals.

His mind really hasn't been what it was in recent months and as he watches the Woman run he promises himself that he will not track her and will not look for her in the papers. He knows there will be nothing there anymore anyway. If she has learned anything it is that her dramatic, romantic, tendencies need to be toned down. There will be nothing so florid in the papers from now on.

His phone buzzes.

_**Where are you? There is an unconscious teacher in the middle of our living room and I don't know why.**_

Sherlock chuckles to himself as he imagines John's brief look of bafflement, him stopping to send the text, then getting out some brandy for the man all without breaking stride.

_**Abroad**__._ He texts back. _**For a case. Will be in tomorrow morning. Put him in your room if he'd prefer to wait and you may borrow mine. Mind the bat wings. SH**_

* * *

><p>Two months later John tells him that the Woman is in America when he has actually been told that she was executed. John is torn between telling him the lie and telling him the truth and when he chooses the lie Sherlock cannot help being slightly disappointed. He has tolerated nothing short of complete honesty from John and John is generally very open about it. This is undoubtedly because Sherlock can tell if he's lying in less than five seconds so this lie is particularly troubling. John knows that he will know he's lying.<p>

Sherlock does not call him on it. He even goes along with it, which ends up breaking John's heart more than any of the many times he's been told to never call his girlfriends back.

John had wanted him to call him on it. That is what puzzles Sherlock after he allows himself a laugh and a joyous bout of violin playing. Aside from wanting to be absolved from the lie, or of wanting Sherlock to confirm that he knew he was lying why was this going on? He hears John head upstairs, changing into some different clothes for the call into work he just got. He bounds down the stairs without saying good bye. Sherlock watches him bolt down the street as fast as he would bolt after a burglar. Ah, John forgot the shift then. Sherlock laughs again.

Sherlock is frequently laughing at John. He also laughs with John, about John, and John laughs at him at with him. He had never used to have been a man who laughed easily, at least not that way. In fact the first time they'd giggled together it the hallway after chasing that cabbie had been the first time he'd laughed in real earnest in years.

Puzzling. He stops playing the violin when his phone buzzes.

_**Don't you think I don't know you were watching me run and laughing at me you berk**_

Sherlock replies back _**I would never dream to insult your intelligence in such a manner. SH**_

He has a second text written up where he informs him that he looks good when he's running but stops himself from sending it. He saves it as a draft and spends a bit of time composing as he tries to figure out where that came from.

* * *

><p>Jim Moriarty had known he'd had a heart from day one. It had taken John being kidnapped and strapped to bomb for him to properly realise it. Once he accepted that fact he had owned that heart. He guarded it, certainly, but he was more than willing to act on it when he needed to. There was one CIA agent out there who certainly knew it when he'd touched his landlady. No one has tried to touch John again since that night on the pier and John had been the one who had got him in the end because Sherlock had been stupid.<p>

Thought had just ceased then, almost like it had in the Woman's lair. He hadn't thought and he hadn't planned, he'd just acted.

The same had happened when he knew the Woman was about to die. Hadn't thought much. Hadn't really planned aside from pointing a mouse at a webpage and clicking. Okay and he had planned the infiltration and everything else but the spirit was there wasn't it?

He thinks on the Woman and the potential dinner at the end of the world. Or 'dinner' he supposed he could assume.

If it were the end of the world today he knows exactly who he would have that dinner with it and it isn't the Woman. There is no contest there. If we are talking about 'dinner' dinner then...he does think his answer might be the same.

Interesting.

Something else comes to mind. Something John had said months ago about naked women having no interest to him in comparison to his life with Sherlock.

Interesting...

* * *

><p>John has always been incredibly insistent that he and Sherlock are not a couple. Has done ever since they've met. Sherlock himself has never properly cared about that sort of thing but he notices enough to know that John has long stopped bothering to correct people. He has full out stopped pretending that it matters to him and has just gone on with it much in the same way Sherlock has.<p>

And pretending is the key here. John has been pretending for most of his adult life.

Harry is gay and Sherlock has a feeling that hadn't gone so well at home. John, suspecting his own tastes, had done his best to be the proper heterosexual son. Not out of some duty to his parents expectations – specifically his mother's and John has made no secret that his childhood was far from ideal – but because if they were both on the outs with Mr. and Mrs. Watson then there was nothing John could do to help either of them. So he'd picked up a part and he'd played it. He'd played it so well that most of the time he believed it himself.

As with almost everything about John there is more here than what one would think. It's hard to tell now without John sitting here with him – he's late getting out of work or else his train is delayed – but John is not exclusively heterosexual. Perhaps more toward the bisexual end of the spectrum (that charm was earnest enough) but he has certainly a marked preference for men. It's something that Sherlock had noticed about him before, almost everyone has a bit of same gender preference hanging around, but Sherlock had not thought on it. It was all so obvious, or at least should have been, when he considers how quickly John will drop a date in order to do something with him. Or used to before he stopped dating altogether.

His phone buzzes. It's an unlisted number and there's nothing but an audio file waiting for him. He's usually more careful about stuff like this but he opens it anyway. He heads up to his bedroom and shuts the door as the phone's tiny speaker crackles with the sound of John's footsteps and John's voice listing Sherlock's behaviour since the first death of the Woman. He remembers this – the day John had been whisked off to meet who he had assumed was Mycroft. John had of course texted him once he'd gotten in the car – he always did when Mycroft 'kidnapped' him now – but Sherlock had followed because the pretty girl that had accosted John outside of Baker Street wasn't quite his brother's style.

John stops talking on the recording. This would be where John had seen her.

_Hello, Dr Watson._

_Tell him you're alive._

_He'd come after me._

_I'll come after you if you don't._

_I believe you._

It sounds a bit patronizing, just a touch and no more than that, but Sherlock knows she believes him. He knows it because he believes him.

_You were dead on a slab! That was definitely you._

John is angry. Fury is bubbling there and he can't help but hear Moriarty's haughty lilt referring to John as a pet. The next time Sherlock sees Moriarty is going to make _him _his pet.

_DNA tests are only as good as the records you keep._

_And you know the record keeper._

_I know what he likes and I needed to disappear._

_Then how come I can see you and I don't even want to?_

_Look I made a mistake. I sent something to Sherlock for safe keeping and now I need it back so I need your help_

_No._

As if there could have been any other answer out of John's mouth, Sherlock nearly says out loud. This is the man who had refused to spy on a man he barely knew.

_It's for his own safety_

_So is this. Tell him you're alive._

_I can't._

_Fine. I'll tell him and I still won't help you._

_What do I say?_

_WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY SAY? YOU'VE TEXTED HIM A LOT!_

_Just the usual stuff._

_There is no usual in this case. _

He has heard John this way before. He knows he has sounded this way before when it comes to John as well but there is something in that snap about the texts that is different. He can't quite identify it but it becomes apparent once the Woman states it. Again, she was cleverer than he was here.

On the tape John is explaining that Sherlock always replies to texts and then the Woman asks if that makes her special. The answer in Sherlock's head, and in John's he knows, is yes but John says maybe aloud. John has more of a heart than Sherlock could ever hope to have and he has spent a lifetime protecting it. He is quite good at it.

The Woman spells the issue out for them both.

_You jealous?_

_We're not a couple_

_Yes you are. There. "I'm not dead. Let's have dinner."_

_Now who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes but for the record if anyone out there still cares I am not actually gay._

_Well I am. Look at us both. _

The audio file ends there. He plays it one more time before he deletes it. He had been there for the last bit of that conversation but he hadn't really heard the actual words. He'd only heard the sound of her voice and that had been all that mattered. Not the voice of the man he took for granted trying feebly to tell himself and her, of all people, that he was not as hopeless or as lost as he really was.

Nothing has been more distasteful to John than being hopeless or lost. That is probably what this whole thing has all been about. John loves mysteries but he loves solving them too. It's why he became a doctor (mostly) and his thirst for adventure and lust for danger led him to the army. He was never lost or hopeless there and he had been both when he'd been invalided home. Meeting Sherlock had restored that balance again but John had been perhaps the most lost during that whole affair than he'd ever been since meeting him. All because he may understand Sherlock better than anyone but his heart was still anyone's guess.

Though to be fair up until now Sherlock had no idea about the finer details of John's heart either. He should have remembered his own advice: with John Watson there was always more there than met the eye.

Just when Sherlock thinks it's time to even the playing field his phone buzzes again. Different number he suspects but it's still unlisted.

_**Been saving that for a bit. You two should have dinner. **_

An address follows with the instructions to say Phillipa Greymore sent them. Sherlock smiles and texts John the instructions to meet at said address in an hour. It's certainly easier if John just takes the train there instead of waiting for his usual homebound train, which appears to be caught in maintenance delays.

_**Need I remind you the rent is due this week, Sherlock?**_

Sherlock smiles. He almost feels sorry for the man. _**A client is paying. Other platform John. SH**_

_**I know you twat. I can navigate the underground blindfolded now no thanks to you**__._

* * *

><p>Calling this establishment luxurious is an insult. Calling it extravagant is still short of the mark. He almost hates the Woman for suggesting this place because this has all subtlety of a brick to the face. Or of a row of bins to the body when one has been thrown out of a window. He feels the coldness of the anger course through him at the memory and sets it aside. He will never delete that day but it does not help to dwell on it. Precious few memories have that effect on him. The pool and John is one. The Woman is another.<p>

The Woman who was once Phillipa Greymore in this place. Sherlock now unfortunately knows just what the maitre'd, the manager, and the bartender all like.

He doesn't know what John likes though, not really. John has spent a large portion of his life pretending he likes a certain thing. He wonders if John even knows what he likes and if what he likes is even Sherlock.

Sherlock had been trying to ignore the wine in favour, strangely, of waiting for John but downs the whole glass now. It does not calm his nerves in the slightest. He'd seen John do this before he'd gone to see Harry, which he had critiqued as hypocritical, but it always seemed to have worked there. Perhaps it is an issue of believing it works to make it work. He can't be bothered.

His mind flows back unbidden to that moment in the flat alone with the Woman, before Mycroft's men had taken him off to that airplane. All heightened pulses and blown pupils; he had seen his own reflected in hers and he could hear his own pulse well enough. It had been chemistry to him, yes, but he had understood it because he had felt it. There was nothing truer in the universe than that.

That memo though, from his heart to his head, informing him that these feelings had not been new per say had been mostly ignored. Also a lot of this chemistry and feeling when it came to John happened while on a case and he was already high as a kite on that. John would be as well for that matter.

Come to think of it he has never seen John look anywhere near the way the Woman had looked with him at any time he ever observed him with his dates. Sarah had had him sleeping on the couch well after she normally would have allowed someone into her bed...

It dawns on him then. He is completely slack jawed and doesn't notice John arrive and slide in to the chair across from him. "Alright?" he asks.

"Fine," Sherlock near sputters. "It's fine, fine, everything's just fine." His mind is still going through girlfriends. Sarah: couch, Helen: spare room, Kelly: didn't get that far, Jeanette: Never invited over...

John arches an eyebrow. "Really?" He examines the wine glass and examines him. "One glass or three?"

"One. Just the one, John I assure you."

John doesn't contest him. "So," he says. "What did we do to earn this privilege? I hear that the lists are months long to get a table in here."

"I dropped a friend's name and that was that."

"Friend this time? You said client earlier."

"Neither term is really accurate."

"If Moriarty got us this table I'm setting this building on fire."

Sherlock snorts. "Don't be absurd."

"Mycroft? No of course it's not Mycroft, the last time Mycroft gave us a nice dinner out you ensured that no one would ever accept a reservation there under Holmes again-"

"Are you a virgin, John?"

Sherlock hadn't really thought the reaction to this question through. As the words leave his mouth he prepares to be yelled at, punched, thrown, or otherwise inconvenienced and is once again utterly surprised to find nothing happening. John just sighs, shuts his eyes for a moment, and then counts to ten in Arabic before he opens his mouth again. "Yes, actually. I'm not sure I want to know how you found that out."

"You don't like women. Not that way anyway."

"My dating record would argue otherwise – "

"On the contrary. Your longest relationship since you've known me has been two months and the only other girlfriend you had before leaving for Afghanistan left you after four months because she much preferred the idea of dating a doctor instead of a soldier. That also was kept long distance on purpose so you never actually saw her enough for either of you to even broach the topic of sleeping together. It had been some time since you'd seen woman naked in a sexual situation until we visited Irene Adler that day and you were quite dumbfounded understandably but significantly less aroused than I would have been ready to predict. Also what you would have been ready to predict judging on your reaction." There had been more than one thing that John was missing that day.

"I – "

"You also gave up women, for good, sometime after that."

"You just said her name."

"That I did. Don't change the subject."

The waiter arrives to take their order at that moment – or at least that's what he's supposed to do. He merely gives his congratulations (or rather gives them from Madam Greymore) and then disappears saying that their food as already been ordered. He leaves them an extra bottle of wine free of charge and heads off.

"That friend of yours," John starts. "This wouldn't be Her would it?"

"Don't be absurd, John. She's dead, remember?" It would be extremely impolite of them to get her killed again.

John plays along. "True," he agrees and raises a glass and sips the wine.

"You're not saved, you know that?" Sherlock says needlessly.

"Of course I'm not," John grumbles. "I haven't been since the bloody pool, probably before that even."

Sherlock smiles. "You don't like being safe, John. Everyone knows that."

John shrugs. He downs the rest of the wine in one swift gulp before asking just how much Sherlock has figured out. Sherlock looks at him. He really should know better. John eventually acknowledges that he should. "Can we leave the serious talk for after the meal?"

Sherlock shakes his head. "Your sister is far from appreciative of your performance and it has been far from necessary for awhile now. Your father died before you left for your third tour and your mother died while you were in hospital after being shot."

John grits his teeth, angry because he knows all too well but it's quite different hearing someone else tell you. The anger fades and he sits back as the food arrives. It is, like the place itself, extravagant. He enjoys a few bites of the meal, and a bit more of the wine, before he speaks again.

"How long have you known?"

There's the rub. "Properly or truly?"

"Both."

"Properly: Everything except the virgin part, which I deduced just before you sat down, earlier today. Truly: probably since you told me the Woman was dead." He holds up a finger. "And that conversation will keep until we're out of here."

John has no reason to allow him that but he does and goes about eating. Sherlock is picking at his food, eating bits of it but not actually ingesting the meal properly. Now that he has 'outed' John the next question is how he really feels about this. It seems he hasn't thought this all the way through.

His phone buzzes. Unlisted number again.

_**You know how you feel because I know how you feel. I know what you like.**_

If anyone knew what he liked it was her. She had brought it all to his attention after all. Most certainly that was unintentional but here it was, and she was certainly enjoying herself here. Or perhaps was she making it up to him? All these texts were certainly dangerous enough for her despite the fact that she was dead to the world and she certainly knew to cover her tracks better now.

Sentiment was always a danger. Love was a dangerous disadvantage. You should never let your heart rule your head.

Easy words to say and think but much harder to put in practice. He should know that better than most. John, the Woman, Mrs. Hudson, his brother (damn him), Lestrade even...

No one was safe from that chemical defect (had he really called it that?); no one who had blood pumping through their veins and was mostly alright in the head at any rate. Sherlock was not fool enough to believe that he was anywhere near mostly alright in the head but he was certainly sane. Certainly saner than most most of the time anyway...

"Sherlock." Sherlock almost doesn't hear John he's so quiet. He looks up at him and John looks back. He is the most cautious that Sherlock has ever seen him and that heart of his beats hard in his chest at the same time as it constricts tightly for bringing John to this. He wouldn't have done this if he knew this was what it would look like. He wouldn't have...

Bollocks. He would have done it. He would have done it because he always needs to know everything and he needs to feel the sigh of relief echo through the room when John asks what he wants.

"Whatever you do," he says after a moment. He allows his hand to reach across the table and brush John's fingers and wrist, which are wrapped tightly around his wine glass, as he tops up the glass for him. "Whatever that is."

John still looks cautious and then goes about finishing his dinner. Sherlock hangs his head and goes about until he feels a sharp but gentle kick under the table. He look back up at John who smiles shyly at him. "Why the long face?" he asks. "I haven't said anything have I?" He pauses. Then raises an eyebrow. " I don't need to, do I? You do know right?"

So many questions. He isn't quite sure which he needs to answer first until John chuckles and shakes his head. "Of course you know," he urges him, gently. "Before I wouldn't have suspected you did but you know now. You've known since Her, you said so yourself."

His phone buzzes again. _**Stop torturing the man. **_

"I need you to say it," is what he says. What he thinks is 'I need you to say it and I need to know you mean it. You could never lie to me, John. Not even if you tried'_._

"I want exactly what you think I do and the rest of what I want to say can wait until we're not in a crowded restaurant."

John may be a virgin but he's kissed before and done probably everything else before. Sherlock, however, can honestly say he has been kissed once and that is the precise limit of his experience. Then again John has never done any of these things with a man before so they are more or less on an even playing field here, which is as it should be with them.

"Good," Sherlock says. "Good, that's very good."

John rolls his eyes affectionately and crosses his utensils on his plate, signalling he's done. Sherlock does the same. They leave arm in arm.

His phone buzzes again but Sherlock decides it can wait.

* * *

><p>Elsewhere Irene Adler smiles to herself. Her message (<em><strong>Good luck, Mr. Holmes. Watch out for both of you<strong>__)_ is a needless warning but she knows that he will appreciate it. She certainly would in his place.

Love is a dangerous disadvantage but it's one that everyone has for good or ill. This particular disadvantage, though, can defend itself which is more than some people can say but it is there.

Everyone appreciates a game when the game is fair, even if they lose. As Irene moves toward the room where Kate is waiting for her she knows that the game is certainly fair now. Or is going to be fair by the time the sun rises over London.


End file.
